Part 1 (1/2)
Worst. Person. Ever.
Douglas Coupland.
This book began, improbably, as an attempt in McSweeney's No. 31 to reinvigorate the biji, a genre in cla.s.sical Chinese literature. Biji roughly translates as ”notebook,” and can contain anecdotes, quotations, random musings, philological speculations, literary criticism and anything that the author deems worth recording. The genre first appeared during the Wei and Jin dynasties, and matured during the Tang dynasty. The biji of that period mostly contain the ”believe-it-or-not” kind of anecdote, and many of them can be treated as collections of short fictions. My thanks to Graham Weatherly, Darren Franich, Jordan Ba.s.s and Dave Eggers. You've made me feel like Cher getting an Oscar.
01.
Dear Reader ...
Like you, I consider myself a reasonable enough citizen. You know: live life in moderation, enjoy the occasional YouTube clip of frolicking otters and kittens, perhaps overtip a waitress who makes the effort to tart herself up a bit, or maybe just make the effort to try to be nice to the poor-yay, poor people!
I suppose, in general, I enjoy travelling through life with a certain Jason Bournelike das.h.i.+ngness. Oh no! An a.s.sa.s.sin is rappelling down the side of the building, armed with a dozen Stanley knives! What are we going to do? It's Raymond Gunt! We're saved!
That's my name, Raymond Gunt, and welcome to my world. I don't know about you, but I believe that helping others is a way of helping yourself; what goes around comes around-karma and all that guff. So, seeing that I'm such a good soul and all, I really don't know how to explain the most recent month of my life. There I was, at home in West London, just trying to live as best I could-karma, karma, karma, suns.h.i.+ne and lightness!-when, out of nowhere, the universe delivered unto me a searing hot kebab of vasectomy leftovers drizzled in donkey j.i.z.z.
Whuzzat?! h.e.l.lo, universe? It's me, Raymond! What the f.u.c.k!
I am left, dear reader, with no other option than to believe that when my world turned to s.h.i.+t last month, it was not, in fact, me who had done anything wrong. Rather, it was the universe, for I, Raymond Gunt, am a decent chap who always does the right thing.
And as I look back to try to figure out when the universe and I veered away from each other, I think it definitely had to be that ill-starred morning when I made the mistake of visiting my leathery c.u.mdump of an ex-wife, Fiona.
Fi.
It was a blighted Wednesday off Charing Cross Road. After about fifty ignored emails, Fi deigned to allow me to come to her office, in a gleaming steel-and-limestone executive tombstone that straddles one of those tiny streets near Covent Garden. The building's lobby was redeemed by being filled with heaps of that 1990s art about death and f.u.c.king-pickled goats, fried eggs and tampons-and there was a faint hissing sound as I pa.s.sed through it and into the elevator, the sound of my soul being sucked out of me, ever so nicely, thank you.
Behind her desk sat Fiona, elfin, her pixie hair dyed a cruel black. She c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at me. ”Jesus, Raymond, I've seen rhesus monkeys that look hotter than you.” She was busy piling caviar atop a Ritz cracker.
”Lovely to see you, too, dear.”
Her office was well-oiled leather and chiselled steel, a fine enough reflection of her method of handling daily life. What was painfully evident was that Fi was minting money with her casting agency. The joke was on me for having suggested that she give the casting gig a try. She's an expert at meeting people and figuring out instantly what their personal style of lying is and how to make it work for them. What else is acting, if not that?
But you do need to know that Fi is a dreadful, dreadful, dreadful person. She is monstrous. She is the Anti-s.h.a.g. She is an atomic bomb of pain. If you puncture her skin, a million baby spiders will explode from her body and devour you alive, pupating your remains, all the while making little squeaking noises that will taunt you while you die in excruciating agony.
And yet ...
... and yet there is something about Fi's, um, musk. I can loathe her at a distance, but up close that scent overrides every other emotion I harbour for the woman: murderous rage, bilious hatred and not a small degree of fear. Fi is the only woman who's ever had this effect on me. All the c.r.a.p I've put up with just for a whiff of her: all the times she's f.u.c.ked me over, looted my bank account, stolen my pills and trash-talked me all the way from Heathrow to Stansted. My inability to overcome this most primal of attractions has been the downfall of my life. There is no other way to explain one of nature's most catastrophic and implausible pairings, but I guess that's what any chap says about his wife.
As I entered her office, Proustian recollections of our time together swam in my head. I felt poetic and wistful.
”One moment, Raymond.” Fi removed a black onyx stash box of c.o.ke from a desk drawer, sprinkled some of it on top of the caviar, and began to demolish her snack, conveniently forgetting to invite me to join in. The noises from her mouth were like randomly typed keys: ”Vbv bdlkfnsld jz slvbds lbfbakl.”
”Looks delicious, dear.”
Suddenly she leaned back in her chair and began coughing out mouthloads of crackers and caviar. ”Vbn. Sfhejwbe cfbiqq fflekh!!!”
Heimlich: yes or no? ”Dear?”
She waved me away and finally shot a cl.u.s.ter of sturgeon eggs out her nostril. ”f.u.c.king h.e.l.l.” She used a nearby letter to fan her face. The crisis seemed to have pa.s.sed. ”Ooh. There. Finally it's gone,” she said.
”What is?”
”The food trapped in my esophagus. It's in my stomach now.”
”f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, that's disgusting, Fi.”
”How is that disgusting, Ray?”
”It's like you've just taken a ma.s.sive s.h.i.+t inside yourself.”
Fi burst into a cackle. ”Sometimes I miss your childlike take on the world, Raymond.” She smiled at me.
”Fi, look, just give me a f.u.c.king shooting a.s.signment. I'm three months behind on my rent.”
”Stop throwing your money away on d.i.l.d.os and Asian preteen p.o.r.n, darling. Then you won't always be broke.”
”I don't go to Thailand, dear. Nor am I into goats and gerbils.”
”So what did you really spend all your money on?”
”Fi, need you be such a raging t.w.a.t?”
”c.o.ke bill overdue?”
”c.o.ke's a bit out of my league these days.” I glanced over at her door to see a pink silk ascot tied around the k.n.o.b. ”Hmmm. What about you-into autoerotic asphyxiation these days?”
”Oh, don't mention autoerotic asphyxiation to me! f.u.c.king entertainers! All these actors and musicians ever want to do is strangle themselves while they're getting off. I can't believe more of them haven't died.”
”How does that whole strangling thing work, anyway? I mean, do actors recite a bit of Hamlet, sing a song or two and then suddenly, Oi! I'm famous and I think I'd better go strangle myself while I come!?”
”Pretty much. And you'd think they'd hire someone to babysit them while they do it.”
”Yes, but that would wreck the fun, wouldn't it? 'Ooh! I can't breathe! Help me! Help me!' Not very s.e.xy at all. Chances are your babysitter would be so repulsed by your lack of commitment she'd let you hang anyway.”
”I keep the ascot there to give my clients proper hanging lessons. The DIY sites on the Internet are hopeless, and a dead client is a client who's no longer making me money.”
I looked at Fiona's beloved onyx c.o.ke box with sad beagle eyes.
”Blow!” said Fi. ”Excellent idea.” She dived in.
G.o.d only knows how badly I was salivating at this impudent display of purchasing clout. She vacuumed two rails, wiped her nostrils and said, ”I like to see you grovel and be deprived of drugs. Life is good.”
”You ball-curdling witch. What is your problem?”
”My problem is you, Raymond darling. I don't like having you in the same city as me.”